Orthodox Jews Child Sex Abuse

some of the same dynamics that fed the crisis in Catholicism — an aloof patriarchy, an insularity verging on superiority, a disinclination to get secular officials involved — exist elsewhere. And the way they've played out in Orthodox Judaism illustrates anew that religion isn't always the higher ground and safer harbor it purports to be. It can also be a self-preserving haven for wrongdoing.

The column gives no evidence that child sexual abuse is any more common among Orthodox Jews than it is among secular humanists, left-wing Protestants, or Catholics. Nor does it mention one big difference between Orthodox Jews and Catholics, which is that Orthodox Judaism encourages its rabbis to get married and have children, while the Catholic clergy are supposed to be celibate. Plenty of public school teachers engage in inappropriate sexual behavior with students, too, and the Times doesn't use that as a reason to attack government schools the way the Bruni column is framed as an attack on religion overall. When British entertainment celebrities who are not Orthodox Jews or Catholic clergy are accused of such abusive behavior, the Times dismisses the complaints as "minor" and "decades old."

The Bruni column goes on:

Schachter further discouraged police involvement by warning that accused abusers could wind up "in a cell together with a shvartze, in a cell with a Muslim, a black Muslim who wants to kill all the Jews." Shvartze is a harshly derogatory racial term.

Shvartze is Yiddish for black. It's acquired some negative or pejorative connotations, and it's not a word I use or recommend using, but Mr. Bruni's description of it as "a harshly derogatory racial term" isn't necessarily accurate. Yiddish-speaking Jews of a certain age sometimes use this term for black people without intending it to be harshly derogatory.

All in all, it's a strange column.

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